Phil, what did you find were the most interesting aspects of the HfS survey?

Phil Fersht: We are going through a new wave where companies are trying to figure out how to adopt technology models, robotics and things like that.

A lot of clients are under pressure to be seen to be evaluating it and figuring it out having a strategy, but the reality is -what came out of the study is -clients aren't viewing BPM providers strategically enough. Around 50% of the clients are not viewing their BPM provider as a strategic partner to do things like cognitive, a lot of automation, and a lot of digital. They are seeing them more as helping them do it, than doing it themselves.

As service providers, what do you make of this rather interesting reading?

Raman Roy: I think what is happening is we are moving to an area new even to our customers. So, our customers have no clue how that analytic piece is to be done, how that robotics piece is to be done.

Now, if something very fundamental is happening I will not give the key away to an outsider even if it is a McKinsey. But I do want a partner who has domain knowledge, who has processing knowledge, technology knowledge, to help me get to this unknown. So, it is heartening to see that they are looking for that kind of partnership.

R Chandrashekhar: The challenge before the BPM industry is what Phil described as 'scary bright' -it is bright if you can do these things, scary if you can't. The IT industry in general has pivoted earlier on many occasions. So, they are good at recognising pivots when they are needed and doing it when it is needed. And we are confident that will happen in this case as well.

Do you think we are doing enough to make the switch for a more strategic engagement?

Keshav Murugesh: I'll give you simple examples of change, how the industry has changed in terms of services. In the past, all of us when we did say a revenue audit of an airline, we sent armies of people in. Today, what do we do?

We just have a technology tool, a platform, we go to an airline and say: give us a data dump of tickets sold. And, what used to take six months is done now in two hours -we now tell them based on algorithms running where is the revenue loss and which travel agencies should they now be deputing.

There is a lot of worry around the impact of automation on jobs in the BPM sector. What do you is going to happen?

Fersht: There are about 16 million workers in this industry; we think over the next five years maybe 9% workers would be affected by automation, mainly low-end transactional tasks. When you think about that, 9% is kind of natural attrition, that's people going into other industries, doing other things anyway. I do not think automation is a big threat to hit this industry. Someone said it is recession that destroys jobs not robots.

Chandrashekhar: You also asked a question on the job which I would like to answer to. See, all of this plays out at very macro level of the industry and is something we have brought out in Perspective 2025.

The first $100 billion, the industry ended up employing over 3.5 million people. The second $100 billion, the estimate is now going to be 1.5 million, which is half the number, so doing the same amount with half the number incrementally. That gives you an idea of the mix of automation and traditional, and how things across the industry are changing.